Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
Summary
Spring-heeled Jack leapt into the popular imagination on Tuesday 9th January 1838. This may seem like uncannily accurate dating for a cultural process, but it was the day on which The Times reported on an announcement made the day before by Sir John Cowen, the Lord Mayor of the City of London. Cowen had made public a letter from an anonymous ‘Peckham resident’ who wanted to bring news of a supposedly supernatural attacker to the attention of the authorities. Since the previous autumn tales had been circulating among the villages that fringed south London, firstly of a phantom bull or bear, and then of a tall, dark, cloaked figure who pounced upon individuals, predominantly women. This strange, evolving character evaded capture through being fleet-footed and, according to rumour, almost superhumanly agile. Panic spread through the metropolis, with the press reporting tales of victims having their clothes sliced to shreds by the creature's claws, losing their wits, suffering convulsive fits or even dying of shock and fright. Accounts came to describe a cloaked being with fiery eyes, who could vomit blue flames from its mouth, and whose sharp metal talons tore the flesh of its victims.
From January to March 1838 he occupied the columns of respectable metropolitan newspapers. Thereafter this urban legend left the capital to stalk the cities, towns and villages of England. From the 1840s to the 1870s Spring-heeled Jack was particularly active in the eastern and southern counties. In the 1880s and 1890s he gradually migrated into northern England and Wales.
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- The Legend of Spring-Heeled JackVictorian Urban Folklore and Popular Cultures, pp. 1 - 16Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012